Solitary Wave Formation from a Generalized Rosenau Equation

A generalized viscous Rosenau equation containing linear and nonlinear advective terms and mixed third- and fifth-order derivatives is studied numerically by means of an implicit second-order accurate method in time that treats the first-, second-, and fourth-order spatial derivatives as unknown and discretizes them by means of three-point, fourth-order accurate, compact finite differences. It is shown that the effect of the viscosity is to decrease the amplitude, curve the wave trajectory, and increase the number and width of the waves that emerge from an initial Gaussian condition, whereas the linear convective term pushes the wave front towards the downstream boundary. It is also shown that the effect of the nonlinear convective term is to increase the steepness of the leading wave front and the number of sawtooth waves that are generated behind it, while that of the first dispersive term is to increase the number of waves that break up from the initial condition as the coefficient that characterizes this term is decreased. It is also shown that, for reasons of stability, the second dispersion coefficient must be much smaller than the first one and its effects on wave propagation are relatively small.